The truly nauseating thing about this whole issue is that the men of the LIBERTY who cooperated in writing this book have given their imprimatur on something which in the end is going to result in their murderers getting off scott-free. Not coincidentally, the author of this book also penned a work* whereby the assassination of JFK–proven slam dunk to have been an Israeli operation from top to bottom by the irreplaceable Michael Collins Piper in his book Final Judgment–was actually the handiwork of–drum role please–the same Lyndon Baines Johnson who is now being blamed for the attack on the LIBERTY.

The U.S. and Panama; An Israeli in Panama: Whose Broker?
As American investigators try to piece together the business and
political affairs of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, one of the most
intriguing figures remains an Israeli who some say was a key adviser to
the former Panamanian strongman. The shadowy role of Mike Harari, a
62-year-old retired agent of the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad,
stirred speculation and debate well before the United States invasion
began.

The Invasion of Panama
By Noam Chomsky. European elite, less than 10% of the population. That
changed in 1968, when Omar Torrijos, a populist general, led a coup that
allowed the black and mestizo [mixed-race] poor to obtain at least a
share of the power under his military dictatorship. In 1981, Torrijos
was killed in a plane crash. By 1983, the effective ruler was Manuel
Noriega, a criminal who had been a cohort of Torrijos and US
intelligence. The US government knew that Noriega was involved in drug
trafficking since at least 1972, when the Nixon administration
considered assassinating him. But he stayed on the CIA payroll. In 1983,
a US Senate committee concluded that Panama was a major center for the
laundering of drug funds and drug trafficking. The US government
continued to value Noriega’s services. In May 1986, the Director of the
Drug Enforcement Agency praised Noriega for his "vigorous anti-drug
trafficking policy." A year later, the Director "welcomed our close
association" with Noriega, while Attorney-General Edwin Meese stopped a
US Justice Department investigation of Noriega’s criminal activities.
In August 1987, a Senate resolution condemning Noriega was opposed by
Elliott Abrams, the State Department official in charge of US policy in
Central America and Panama.

[Source - PDF] Senior officials ignored Fiers' opinion. On September 20, North informed Poindexter via e-mail that "Noriega wants to meet me in London" and that both Elliott Abrams and Secretary of State George Shultz support the initiative. Two days later, Poindexter authorized the North/Noriega meeting.

[Source - PDF] On February 10, 1986, Owen ("TC") wrote North (this time as "BG," for "Blood and Guts") regarding a plane being used to carry "humanitarian aid" to the contras that was previously used to transport drugs. The plane belongs to the Miami-based company Vortex, which is run by Michael Palmer, one of the largest marijuana traffickers in the United States. Despite Palmer's long history of drug smuggling, which would soon lead to a Michigan indictment on drug charges, Palmer receives over $300,000.00 from the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Aid Office (NHAO) -- an office overseen by Oliver North, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Elliott Abrams, and CIA officer Alan Fiers -- to ferry supplies to thecontras.

The Truth About Israel, Iran and 1980s U.S. Arms Deals Recently declassified Pentagon documents reveal a strange, not to say illicit, 1980s operation called 'Tipped Kettle,' in which weapons stolen by Israel from the PLO in Lebanon were transferred to theContras and to anti-American elements in Iran.

Robert Parry: Second Thoughts on October Surprise (...) But the key to understanding the October Surprise case was that it appeared to be a prequel to the Iran-Contra scandal, part of the same storyline beginning with the 1980 crisis over 52 American hostages held in Iran, continuing through their release immediately after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981, then followed by mysterious U.S. government approval of secret arms shipments to Iran via Israel in 1981, and ultimately morphing into the Iran-Contra Affair of more arms-for-hostage deals with Iran until that scandal exploded in 1986.

On June 12, 1986, Seymour Hersh published a front-page story in the New York Times exposing General Manuel Noriega’s twenty-year association with the Colombian drug cartels. The exposé appeared just as Noriega was in Washington to receive a medal of honor from the Inter-American Defense Board. The article alleged that Noriega was involved in money laundering, arms dealing and political assassinations, including the torture and murder by decapitation of his liberal opponent, Dr. Hugo Spadafora. The article, based on sources in the Defense Intelligence Agency, also accused Noriega of selling US technology to the Cubans and Eastern Bloc nations.

Hersh quoted from a 1985 House Foreign Affairs Committee report that called Panama “a drug and chemical transshipment point and money laundering center of drug money.” That same investigation of Noriega prompted the NSC’s Admiral John Poindexter to travel to Panama and have a session with Noriega, during which Poindexter claims he told the squat general to “cut it out.” But it wasn’t long before Elliott Abrams, assistant secretary of state, had bailed out Noriega by intervening in a policy debate within the Reagan administration to insist that only after the Sandinistas had been dealt with should any serious sanctions against Noriega be considered. Noriega was a vital component in the CIA’s war against Nicaragua. At the request of the Reagan administration he had contributed more than $100,000 to Contras operating in Costa Rica, and in 1985 he had provided “an ordnance expert” for a North-planned operation that blew up a Sandinista military depot in Managua.

After the unflattering attention sparked by Hersh’s article, Noriega called Oliver North seeking counsel in cleaning up his image. North agreed to meet with a Noriega emissary on August 23, 1986, and minuted the encounter in a computermessage to John Poindexter, later unearthed by the National Security Archive:

You will recall that over the years Manuel Noriega and I have developed a fairly good relationship. It was Noriega who told me Panama would be willing to accept [Ferdinand] Marcos [the exiled former president of the Philippines].… Last night Noriega called and asked if I would meet w[ith] a man he trusts – a respected Cuban American – the president of a college in Florida. He flew in this morning and he outlined Noriega’s proposal: In exchange for a promise from us to ‘help clean up his [Noriega’s] image’ and a commitment to lift our ban on FMS [foreign military sales], he would undertake to ‘take care of the Sandinista leadership for us. I told the messenger that such actions were forbidden by US law and he countered that Noriega had numerous assets in place in Nicaragua that could accomplish many things that would be essential [to a] Contra Victory. Interesting. My sense is that this is a potentially very useful avenue, but one which would have to be very carefully handled. A meeting with Noriega could not be held on his turf – the potential for recording this information is too great … you will recall that he was head of Intelligence for the PDF [Panamanian Defense Forces] before becoming CG [commanding general]. My last meeting with Noriega was in a boat on the Potomac … Noriega travels frequently in Europe at this time of year and a meeting could be arranged to coincide with one of my other trips. My sense is that this offer is sincere, that Noriega does indeed have the capabilities preferred and that the cost could be born by Project Democracy (the figure of $1M was mentioned) … The proposal seems sound to me and I believe we could make the appropriate arrangements for reasonable OPSEC [operational security] and deniability. Beg advice.

Within minutes Poindexter had responded to North’s suggestion that this murderous thug and drug smuggler be retained at a cost of $1 million to help in the Contra War. “I wonder what he means about helping him clean up his act,” the admiral wrote. “If he is really serious about that we should be willing to do that for nearly nothing. If on the other hand he just wants us indebted to him, so that he can blackmail us to lay off, then I am not interested. If he really has access inside, it could be very helpful, but we cannot (repeat not) be involved in any conspiracy or assassination. More sabotage would be another story. I have nothing against him other than his illegal activities. It would be useful for you to talk to him directly to find out exactly what he has in mind with regard to cleaning up his act.”

North cleared the meeting with Secretary of State George Shultz and Shultz’s sidekick Abrams and then proceeded to London, where he hunkered down in a hotel with Noriega and reviewed plans to wreak mayhem on the Sandinistas, all in contravention of the express will of Congress. They reviewed plans for bombings of the Managua airport, attacks on phone lines and power plants and the destruction of an oil refinery. Noriega also pledged to create training camps for the Contras and the Afghan mujahedin, no doubt with advanced courses in accountancy, international banking practices and the covert movement of drugs and money.

In exchange North agreed to sign Noriega up with a New York PR firm. In his book Panama: The Whole Story, Kevin Buckley quotes an American source who observed North and Noriega together. “To North, Noriega was a spymaster, an operator, a man who made things happen. To North, Noriega was like Brando, up the river in Apocalypse Now. No rules. Noriega thought North was a pipsqueak.”

If North revered Noriega, North’s patron William Casey, director of the CIA, had a coldly pragmatic appreciation of the usefulness of the Panamanian. Casey saw Panama as the key to US operations throughout Latin America, not only against Nicaragua but also Cuba. The relationship between Casey and Noriega was described by the latter’s right-hand man, José Blandón, to documentary filmmakers Leslie and Andrew Cockburn: “The US had information that Noriega was involved in the drug trade for at least eight years. Yes, they knew about that. Butfor the White House, the Reagan administration, the Contras were so important that the drugs took second place. There was a very special relationship between Casey and Noriega. At least $3 million in support came from Casey. Whenever there would be an investigation of Noriega, Casey would stop it.”

Actually the US had known about Noriega’s drug trafficking since at least the late 1960s, and there was a history across nearly three decades of US military and intelligence agencies shielding Noriega from criminal investigation. He had been recruited by the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1959 and began working for the CIA in 1967. When the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs attempted to indict Noriega in 1971 for drug trafficking, the CIA intervened to protect their man in Panama. The BNDD continued to brood on ways to get rid of Noriega, including a procedure chastely described as “total and complete immobilization.” But in the end the drug agency was overruled and ordered to work with the drug smuggler. Throughout the 1980s Noriega’s star continued to rise. In 1976, for example, the CIA paid Noriega $100,000 for his work on behalf of the Agency. The director of the CIA at the time was George Bush. By 1985, at the height of the Contra War, Noriega’s paycheck from the CIA had soared to $200,000 a year.

On October 5, 1986, a few weeks after the meeting in London, the bold plans explored by North and Noriega came crashing down in the wake of the similarly abrupt descent of a plane ferrying arms from Ilopango air base in El Salvador to Contra camps inside Nicaragua. As Eugene Hasenfus, a veteran of the CIA’s Air America operation in Laos, was kicking the supplies out of the back of a C-123K, a Sandinista gunner scored a direct hit and only Hasenfus managed to parachute down and into the world’s headlines, offering incontrovertible proof of the Reagan administration’s illegal shipments. Among the phone numbers in Hasenfus’s notebook was that of George Bush’s office.

In rapid order, Noriega’s fervent supporters inside the Reagan administration lost favor. Then William Casey died. Noriega’s star plummeted. He became a liability to George Bush, and it was not long before Noriega had been indicted as a drug smuggler, then became the target of an American invasion of Panama on December 20, 1989. Absurdly titled Operation Just Cause, the mission succeeded in killing plenty of Panamanian civilians but not Noriega, who found sanctuary in the house of the Papal Nuncio. Finally, on Christmas Eve, Noriega surrendered and in a Miami courtroom in 1990 learned what it was to fall from grace. The veteran of the CIA’s payroll and a thousand forgiven drug shipments went down on a 45-year prison sentence, which as of 1998 he is serving in the state of Florida. His amusing memoir, America’s Prisoner, detailing his career and relationship with the CIA, was not widely reviewed in the US press.

The greatest irony of all is that under the US-installed successor to Noriega, Guillermo Endara, Panama became the province of the Calí cartel, which rushed in after the Medellín cartel was evicted along with Noriega. By the early 1990s, Panama’s role in the Latin American drug trade and its transmission routes to the US had become more crucial than ever.

Dual Loyalty
By Victor Mallet REVIEWS OF TWO BOOKS: The Samson Option: Israel,
America and the Bomb by Seymour Hersh, and Dangerous Liaison: The
Inside Story of the US-Israeli Covert Relationship by Andrew Cockburn
and Leslie Cockburn

A Special Relationship
By David Schoenbaum. Review of DANGEROUS LIAISON The Inside Story of the
U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship. By Andrew Cockburn and Leslie
Cockburn.

In
Bed With the Israelis? DANGEROUS LIAISON: The Inside Story of the
U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship, By Andrew and Leslie Cockburn
September 01, 1991 | Dan Raviv | Raviv, a
CBS News correspondent based in London, is co-author of "Every Spy a
Prince: The Complete History of Israel's Intelligence" (Houghton
Mifflin.)

"The Zionist movement, created by the Jewish big
bourgeoisie at the end of the 19th century, was born with a decidedly
counterrevolutionary purpose. From the founding of the World Zionist
Organization in 1897 to the present, Zionism, as ideology and political
practice, has opposed the world revolutionary process.Zionism
is counterrevolutionary in a global sense in that it acts the world over
against the three major forces of revolution: the socialist community,
the working class movement in capitalist countries and the movement for
national liberation.Zionist counterrevolution began by making
inroads in the European working class movement. In the early years, when
the growth of monopoly capitalism and the expansion of reactionary
tendencies that accompanied the establishment of the imperialist phase
of capitalism demanded the unity and solidarity of the proletariat, the
Zionists focused on dividing the working class.They propagated
the thesis that all non-Jews were, and would always be, anti-Semites;
asserted that the only possibility for the Jewish masses’ well-being and
justice was to emigrate to the “promised land”; and defended class
collaboration, thus diverting the Jewish proletariat away from the
struggle for their real emancipation and dividing and weakening the
working class movement. It’s not fortuitous that in czarist police
archives one finds documents calling for support for the Zionist
movement as a way of stemming the tide of proletarian revolution.Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, wrote at the time in his
diary:“All our youth; all those who are from 20 to 30 years old, will
abandon their obscure socialist tendencies and come over to me.”However, the efforts of Zionist counter-revolution could not hold back
the wheels of history. The victory of the Great October Socialist
Revolution in Russia ushered in a period of transition from capitalism
to socialism on a world scale. The first victory of the proletariat, the
premise of future victories, was a heavy blow to Zionism.Most
of the money that filled Zionist coffers came from Russia, where czarism
had humiliated and oppressed the Jews for centuries. Russia provided a
million immigrants for the Zionist colonization of Palestine. When the
Russian Revolution liquidated the exploitation of man by man, it also
destroyed the basis for Zionism in the Soviet Union.Leninist
policy on the national question toppled all Zionist myths that the Jews
could not be fully incorporated, with equal rights, into society and
destroyed all the racist claims on the inevitability of anti-Semitism.
The Zionists never did, and never will, forgive the Soviet state and its
Leninist Party, not so much for cutting off the money flow from Russia
and for the loss of workers for the colonization effort, but because the
Bolsheviks implemented a correct policy that incorporated the talents
and efforts of the Soviet Jews into the tasks of building a new society
and thus demonstrated the class origins of discrimination and
anti-Semitism, breaking with the past and providing a genuine solution
to the Jewish problem, a solution which was not and could never be a
massive exodus to Palestine.Zionist counterrevolution took on an
anti-Soviet thrust. Before October 1917 the Zionists collaborated with
Kerensky. Later they supported all the attempts at counter-revolution
and enthusiastically participated in the different white “governments”
set up in different parts of the country during the Civil War [in
Russia]. They were active in all the moves against the Soviet Union from
abroad, and their powerful propaganda machine spread a spate of lies
about the first workers’ and peasants’ state in the world.Not
even the Soviet victory over German fascism, which saved so many Jewish
lives, made the Zionists change their anti-Soviet stand.With the
outbreak of the cold war the Zionists collaborated in all the
subversive and diversionary activities against the USSR and other
socialist countries. The secret services of the Zionist state of Israel
coordinated their spy activities with the CIA. Zionist agents played an
active role in the counter-revolutionary attempts in Hungary and
Czechoslovakia.Today Zionism seconds the hypocritical
anti-Soviet campaign on presumed violations of the human rights of Jews
in the Soviet Union and does all it can to put pressure on Soviet
citizens of Jewish origin so they will leave their true homeland and go
to Israel. This effort by Zionist counter-revolution can only lead to new
failures. And to complete the picture there is the Zionist
counter-revolutionary action against the national liberation movements.Soon after World War I, Zionist settlers penetrated into Palestinian
territory, acting as the spearhead of British imperialist interests in
opposition to the Arab peoples’ hopes for independence. Their role was
clearly spelled out by the prominent Zionist leader Max Nordau in a
statement to the British authorities:“We know what you want from
us: that we defend the Suez Canal.We must defend your route to India
which passes through the Middle East.We are ready to take on that
difficult task. But you must allow us to become powerful enough to carry
out that task.”And, as a matter of fact, the Zionists became a
power and succeeded in establishing their own state in 1948: the Zionist
state of Israel. Now their task is to defend oil routes, protect all
the interests of U.S. imperialism and block the advance of the Arab
revolution.Backed by tremendous amounts of imperialist economic
and military aid, the Zionists are constantly acting against national
liberation movements.At one time it was their mission to
penetrate African and Asian independence movements, guarantee that the
newly independent states followed paths acceptable to imperialism, that
they not stray from the confines of neo-colonialism. Israel offered
courses, advisers, all sorts of aid.But the ploy wasn’t very
successful. Israel’s increasing role as imperialism’s policeman in the
Middle East, its racism and avowed expansionism made the young African
and Asian nations see the dangers of Israeli “aid,” the treachery of
Israeli foreign policy.Nevertheless, the Zionist state took up a
new role in the struggle of world reaction against progress. It went
beyond the geographical confines of the Middle East, established
friendly ties with all reactionary regimesand began to supply arms,
equipment and advisers to those who were trying to suppress national
liberation struggles.The Israeli armaments industry specialized
in designing and producing all sorts of weapons for urban and rural
anti-guerrilla warfare.The South African racist regime, the
dictatorships of Guatemala and El Salvador, and the fascist Pinochet are
among the best clients of the Israeli armaments industry.Israeli arms sales in 1978 were estimated at $400 million.One of their best clients was the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza.Zionist counter-revolution was present in Somoza’s Nicaragua in the
form of Galil guns and Pull-push planes, but they couldn’t stop the
victory of the Sandinista revolutionaries.This is a symbol of
our times: neither the machinations of Zionist counterrevolution, nor
Israeli arms, can hold back the victorious march of the peoples of the
world."